Re: Editing Binary Files

From: laura fairhead (run_signature_script_for_my_email_at_INVALID.com)
Date: 11/01/05

  • Next message: Neil Woods: "Re: Editing Binary Files" 
    Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 00:39:21 +0000 (UTC)

    On 29 Oct 2005 13:29:35 -0700, "Tulasi" <tulasinandan@gmail.com> wrote:

    >Hi!
    > I am just an end user for linux/unix. I want to edit a precompiled
    >binary to change the locations /usr/local etc. to some other location.
    >e.g. In the code, they might have specified /usr/local/share for share
    >files but I want to change it to ../share I tried to open and edit the
    >file in some editors (vi, bvi). First of all I do not understand all
    >the crazy stuff there. I just tried to look for /usr/local and replace
    >it by ../ but it did not work. Could anyone please tell me how to do it
    >and some place with a good tutorial on understanding and editing binary
    >files?
    >
    >Thanks,
    >Tulasi
    >
    >P.S. Although there is always the option of compiling the source but I
    >just want to learn editing binary files :)

    Hi,

    The usual shell tools aren't really designed for working
    with binary data, the only thing you can possibly get away
    with is using a combination of awk/od/uuencode as follows;

    (1) dump file with od, -v -An -txC for hex-byte output

    pipe that into

    (2) 'awk' script which searches for the pattern you are
        trying to match (here '/usr/local/share\0' ).
        It will have to convert all the ascii characters to
        binary hexadecimal to do this. You can keep a buffer
        (size specified in the script itself) which is a window
        on the incoming hex-text-data and run a "match()" to look
        for your search expression. When found the output can
        be replaced with whatever (pressumably '../share\0\0\0\0\0\0\...')

    pipe that into

    (3) a shell script that make's a uuencoded output stream
        from incoming hex-text-data

    pipe that into

    (4) uudecode

    So, essentially 'od' is used to get the binary data into text form
    it is then processed and 'uudecode' is used to get the text back
    into binary.

    Of course this is all _totally nuts_; I used this method and posted
    a full solution to do binary search/replace on USENET ages ago
    if you really have to do it that way google for the source....

    BUT it's much better to use a tool that can handle the job: _perl_

    Just open the file in binmode (for reading), read the whole
    thing into a variable, do the s/// substituion, output the
    result and dump it out :-) Probably an 8 line program
    although maybe some of the folks on comp.lang.perl.* can
    do it in a lot less ;-)

    byefornow
    laura 

    -- 
echo alru_aafriehdab@ittnreen.tocm |sed 's/\(.\)\(.\)/\2\1/g'
  • Next message: Neil Woods: "Re: Editing Binary Files"

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